Anti-alien Campaign in Australia

July 28, 1938

MELBOURNE (Jul. 27)

A number of large Australian newspapers have opened a campaign to show the dangers of a preponderance of alien over British immigrants, while, at the same time, political and professional circles are campaigning against a relaxation of immigration requirements.

Premier Smith of Queensland is demanding that the Commonwealth Government investigate the alleged repeated use of the same landing money by successive immigrants. All 600 medical students at Melbourne university have decided to petition the Federal Government to refuse visas to Austrian refugee physicians.

Under the caption, “Alien Migration Called Menace,” The Melbourne Herald, which usually reports the Federal Government’s views, quotes unionists and social workers as stating that aliens arriving in victoria from South and Central Europe in the past year are menacing Australian working and living standards.

The Herald editorially demands an investigation into the administration of immigration laws, asserting that admission should not be easy for those likely to affect Australian standards and to become public charges, while the Sydney Bulletin declares that “Australia is being pressed, openly and subtly, to take more foreign Jews than it can accommodate and assimilate,” and warns in the strongest terms that unrestricted Jewish immigration from Europe would mean the herding of brooding aliens into the cities.